Swedish White Chocolate & Cardamom Wreath

Hmmm… I love the smell of cardamom in my kitchen! Come with me and discover my Swedish wreath with white chocolate chips and deliciously scented with cardamom.

Today’s recipe reminds me so much of Sweden. As you probably know already, I spent many years in Stockholm in Sweden before moving to Chicago. Until recently I never really felt nostalgic about this country, partly because I was to excited discovering Chicago, and also because I naturally have this tendency to move forward in life instead of looking back in the past. These last weeks however, I started missing the Swedish nature, the everyday life in Sweden, meeting some friends… as if I had left a part of me over there. And with all that, I also started missing the smell of the deliciously scented cinnamon and cardamom Swedish buns – or wreaths – too!

The wreath you have in front of you was baked in a little kitchen studio, Bomankök, in the city center of Stockholm, while I was giving an interview to the French website Kweezine. We were in Summer 2015 (wow, that long ago already!), the weather was sunny, almost warm, and I was really happy and proud that a French magazine was here for me.

By the way, have you ever heard of Kweezine ? If you live in France, are a food blogger, chef, pastry chef, or simply passionate about wine and cooking, it might be of interest for you. Inded, through Kweezine’s website, you can give or find different cooking classes. Last summer, I had the pleasure to give a Swedish baking class together with Kweezine and Ikea in Bordeaux and it was an amazing experience to me. The Kweezine team is just awesome and always make you feel comfortable.

For this wreath, I used the same dough as the one I used for my Swedish cinnamon buns “kanelbullar” (always a favorite among my readers, you can’t go wrong with this recips!) and simply shaped it into a crown instead of a bun. The use of cardamom here reminds us of the cardamom buns, while the white chocolate brings some additional sweetness taste to the wreath.

When it comes to the shape itself, it is indeed much easier than it seems: once you rolled the dough out into a large rectangle, spread the filling over one half lengthwise, then fold in the empty over half over it. Cut in half, lengthwise, so that you get two long stripes that you can tie up as if it was a two-stripes braid. Join the extremities with a little bit of water to make them stick together, and you’re done!

Right after the Kweezine team arrived for the interview, I removed the wreath from the oven. The entire kitchen studio had this subtle scent of cardamom, it’s just heaven. Together with the team, we sat on the counter top, made the interview, the photo shooting and enjoyed the traditional fika – this typically Swedish coffee break generally served with pastries. Both the interview and the recipe are on Kweezine website for quite a while now, and today I am happy to share this marvelous recipe with my readers too, with a big thank you to Laetitia from Kweezine for the pictures credit. And now, shouldn’t we all go for fika?